Gnevny Class destroyer

Warships Military 








The Gnevny class were a group of 29 destroyers built for the Soviet Navy in the late 1930s. They are sometimes known as the Gremyashchiy class and the official Soviet designation was Project 7. These ships fought in World War II.

In the early 1930s the Soviets felt able to restart construction of fleet destroyers and forty-eight ships were ordered under the Second Five-Year Plan.

Gnevny Class destroyerThe design was produced with Italian assistance despite ideological differences between the Soviets and Fascist Italy. They resembled contemporary destroyers built in Italy for the Greek and Turkish navies.

They suffered from some of the same weaknesses of contemporary Italian ships with structural weakness and limited seaworthiness. There were also significant machinery problems in the earliest ships. The design flaws were apparent after trials of the first units in 1936/37 and production stopped after 30 ships. A modified design was then placed into production as the Type 7U.

Four surviving ships from the Pacific Fleet were transferred to the People's Liberation Army Navy and served as the Anshan-class destroyers.

Having decided on the specifications of the large 40-knot (74 km/h; 46 mph) Leningrad-class destroyer leaders, the Soviet Navy sought Italian assistance in designing smaller and cheaper destroyers. They licensed the plans for the Folgore class and, in modifying it for their purposes, overloaded a design that was already somewhat marginally stable.

The Gnevnys had an overall length of 112.8 meters (370 ft 1 in), a beam of 10.2 meters (33 ft 6 in), and a draft of 4.8 meters (15 ft 9 in) at deep load. The ships were significantly overweight, almost 200 metric tons (197 long tons) heavier than designed, displacing 1,612 metric tons (1,587 long tons) at standard load and 2,039 metric tons (2,007 long tons) at deep load. Their crew numbered 197 officers and sailors in peacetime and 236 in wartime. More details